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Last night I was reminded what guilt I carry in regards to my kids and leaving when I divorced their dad. I didn’t abandon them. But it feels like I did.

I went from full time all the time mom to spending multiple evenings not home so they could sorta transition to time with their dad. To moving out and only seeing them a few hours a few days a week and every other weekend. Oftentimes I had to come sit with them on his days because they were inconsolable at bedtime.

I feel like I have caused them irreparable trauma, evens eight years later.

At the time everyone told me that it would make me stronger and them stronger and it would make me this force to reckon with and a role model. I’ll look back on these days with pride, they said.

But I don’t.

Instead I feel like they’re worse off. Instead I feel like I left them. Instead I feel like they’re closer to their dad. Even tho he only sees them four days a month. Even tho he’s the fun uncle who never has to set actual boundaries or develop routine or be there for them day in day out, night after night.

I feel like I’m here all the time and I’m worse off for it.

I want to not have so much guilt. I want to not have so much resentment about the fact that it doesn’t seem like they even care what love and effort I put forth. I want to feel like I’m not losing my mind.

My mental health is slipping further and further away.

I can’t be who I want to be for them when I can’t seem to let this go. I don’t know how to navigate their apathy. I don’t know the productive way to move forward.

I am afraid to eat today. I don’t want to be afraid. I want to feel brave and confident about it. But alas, here I am. Afraid.

My disordered eating has grown exponentially recently. I’ve watched it and felt it and let it. All the safeties I put in place have been no match for all the bigger, heavier things. All the life and history (so much history) and depression and chemical imbalance and anxiety.

It used to be that even when things got overwhelming, I still had a code. That code has gotten blurrier and blurrier over the weeks. With my permission and without. The both and neither of me being me and me being my deteriorating mental health. The dichotomy of taking personal responsibility and also it being completely out of my hands. The subtleties of loving it and loathing it.

But today I haven’t eaten yet. Because I haven’t been hungry yet. Because I have been making the choice, and not because I’m letting the choice make me. And now it’s after noon and I’ve made food and I’m afraid to eat. Because after I eat, it becomes harder to feel like the choice is mine. And I like the control right now. I enjoy not having the overwhelm of insatiable. I miss just feeling normal.

It’s a quietly nagging, yet growing concern, that my mental health might be decreasing, while my mental illness may be increasing. It’s a less than optimal inverse effect. I’d like it to stop, but don’t really have the whatever to do anything about it. (I see what you did there, depression. Very clever.)

Here I am, mid-February, just riding it out still. I have moments that I want to be proactive and get myself far from this negative behavior. But the thought of not succeeding in the proactivity is overwhelming and so I choose to not try.

It’s a completely asinine cycle, yet here I am still in the vortex. I feel like if someone would just tell me to stop, I would. And yet, stopping because someone told me to seems….I dunno. Short term? Cheating? Fulfilling my submissive tendencies?

I dunno.

So I’m still here instead. Swimming with the eating disorder and anxiety and depression and the complete lack of satiety. But at least I’m still swimming. And not deciding to just drown in it all. Because–fuck–I’ve seen more people announce that so-and-so has succumb to their inner demons and darkness more times than I can count already this year. And it hurts. And what the fuck is in the air? ‘Cause I feel it too.

Not the death, but the heaviness.

I don’t have thoughts of suicide, but I do have thoughts of “why the fuck did he choose death now? And what made the final decision?And if it can happen to anyone….if it can happen to all these people when no one saw it coming….what makes me not susceptible? What makes my husband or children or close friends not susceptible?

I love this space. I love that I created it and maintain it and give life to it. I love that I utilize it and *find* life here. I’ve had other blogs that meant a lot to me. I have more than once filled an entire notebook with words. I have loved all of those spaces and they were all what I needed in that moment.

This space feels different tho. As much growth as I’ve had in the last eight years, this place and time feels the most loving and bright. The most me. My best me.